Metacrock wrote:What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness.

Just a small observation, but it would make sense that religious people would be happier than the non-religious, overall, because the religious have regular, predictable social patterns that incline them to certain estimable behaviours and psychologies. The same is true of our paleolithic ancestors, and many tribal cultures today: they are happier, overall, because of the regularity and predictability of their communal life together. The non-religious of today are in some ways like the outcasts of yesteryears, and their overall happiness is beset by some of the same stresses: lack of familial community and patterned social groupings.

So, really, I think the studies you've cited speak to a much deeper subject than religion per se. Your articles shine a light on the necessity for human community as a marker for increased happiness. I think placing the findings of those studies solely on the shoulders of 'religion' denigrades the underlying phenomenon happening between the religious that leads to their overall increase in happiness: social acceptance. Cavemen were happier when they were not tribal outcasts, too. But that does nothing to prove the veracity of their religions and superstitions, just like the marginal increase in happiness amongst the religious of today does nothing to prove the veracity of modern religions.

Or to put the same point in a rougher way, George Bernard Shaw stated as follows:

"The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."

you might notice this debate is not proceeding. I think he checked out once he got over here and saw that I have something to say and I'm not just regurgitating the average stuff one seems on message boards, he figured he didn't want to take it on. Or something.

Kane Augustus wrote:Metacrock,

In your opening remarks to Electric, you stated the following:

Metacrock wrote:What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness.

Just a small observation, but it would make sense that religious people would be happier than the non-religious, overall, because the religious have regular, predictable social patterns that incline them to certain estimable behaviours and psychologies. The same is true of our paleolithic ancestors, and many tribal cultures today: they are happier, overall, because of the regularity and predictability of their communal life together. The non-religious of today are in some ways like the outcasts of yesteryears, and their overall happiness is beset by some of the same stresses: lack of familial community and patterned social groupings.

the skeptic is reducing the concept to "happy." There's a lot more involved in transformation than just "happy." You look at the full concept it becomes apparent it not accounted for by naturalistic means.

So, really, I think the studies you've cited speak to a much deeper subject than religion per se. Your articles shine a light on the necessity for human community as a marker for increased happiness. I think placing the findings of those studies solely on the shoulders of 'religion' denigrades the underlying phenomenon happening between the religious that leads to their overall increase in happiness: social acceptance.

you are defining religion in a dismissive way that doesn't include the things you see which you paint with another term. You are selectively ruling out aspects you don't like as "religious."

Cavemen were happier when they were not tribal outcasts, too. But that does nothing to prove the veracity of their religions and superstitions, just like the marginal increase in happiness amongst the religious of today does nothing to prove the veracity of modern religions.

again with the reduction to "happy."

But all of this misses the point which was the epistemic judgment thing.

Or to put the same point in a rougher way, George Bernard Shaw stated as follows:

"The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality."

Cheers!
Kane

If you do the reduction to happy. that's dishonest becuase it's failure to recognize what's being said. You wont to deny religion, so you just exclude from it the things you wish for then claim they somewhere else and they say "I have not found religion I found this other stuff."

why don't you jump and take the guy's place? you would be a more challenging opponent anyway. Don't forget the real point is not the "happy" or the transformation but the epistemic.

the transformational is the delivery system for navigation. So that's important to remember and that's it's more than just happy.

assume my longer statement above is our opening. I will add this: I think your dislike of religion is biasing your understanding of what all the term can include. I think you are saying religion is this narrow line of social behaviors and we can't streach definition of it to include these others things they are too glorious to be thought of as religion. So we have to truncate the uses the term and fine some other category to put these other things in.

The self authentication and actualization (including happiness) is a response to certain kinds of experiences, those experiences are part and parcel of religion. they are the reason religion exists. That's why it was started, because experienced these things and then sought exploitations about what they meant. Those experiences have always led people to religious belief and been associated with the divine.

My definition of religion is this:

The attempt to medicate between an understanding of the human problematic and the realization of ultimate transformational experience that resolves the problematic. That transformational experience is the experiences we are discussing.